Reimi's Blog

Heeeey,

some news for all ReactOS interested ppl out there. We have a UDF filesystem driver now.
UDF aka Universal Disk Format is a open filesystem which is used quite often for DVDs and BluRays, but you can use it for USB drives, HDDs and even floppies, too if you want. Windows normally does not support it to format a drive with UDF by GUI, but by console you can do so quite fine. Without this filesystem, ReactOS has no way to play DVDs or BluRays at all and thus it’s an important one, even more impartant than NTFS IMO.
The driver is from Alter’s DVD Write Now Package which he licensed under GPLv2 for us. THX very much for doing so.
Problems we had and which were already fixed are:
– MingW-w64 GCC build was not possible
– SEH2 exception handling was missing
– Many includes and headers which are completely unneeded in ROS code base were removed
– Code excerpts for Demo and Shareware versions were removed
– Building for AMD64 and ARM was not possible

Now it builds fine, but is still not really working. This is not only the case for ROS, but also for Windows XP SP3. Thus we produced a bug in there while we were inlcuding the driver or it had a bug in the code base we got from Alter.

I opened a report about it. Sadly it was not fixed yet.
Here the general report about missing UDF support.

I will keep you updated ^^.

Today, after some stressful coding time for him and all the testers, like Mysoft, hbelusca and a guy who does not want to be mentioned, [TheFlash] activated NTVDM’s FPU emulation in the NTVDM BIOS meaning that any app now detects an available FPU in the emulated 486 PC. Before some apps ignored that and just threw the commands to the emulated hardware waiting and hoping for an answer. That resulted in some nice problems due to missing features and bugs in the FPU emulation at that time. But some apps activated an own emulation thx to that (QBasic for example). Even these apps will now use our own FPU. It MIGHT be possible that regressions occur now due to that and maybe still existing bugs. But even in the maybe still buggy state, some apps are really happy about the FPU bein available now.

Bayern/Deutschland/Europa Wega Geography learning and Hunger:

Tunnel B1:

I was asked to not just add images in here from our cats that died… So… here we are. 4 of our 5 cats left here in here. Sammy (Samantha), Lilly, Felix, and Finja. Have phun ^^

Heeey,
some news for all ppl out there who ask again and again about support for something else than x86 architecture support.
This was a big problem in the past due to missing Structured Exception Handling support in GCC at all except our implementation which ONLY works on x86 due to some ASM magic. This was resolved by fully supporting MSVC for a while now.
Structured Exception Handling is a powerful feature of MSVC to handle hardware and software exceptions in the software easily and identically. Without it most exceptions can’t be taken care of at all and RectOS would not even boot to a certain extent.
It’s not new that x64 building was already possible in the past by using MSVC which includes SEH for x86, x64 and ARM, but after some Wine syncs and other commits it broke down for a while then. Recently this was fixed in main trunk and I did the same for rosapps subfolder, too. So you can build ReactOS for x64 again. (With all the stuff from rosapps) Don’t expect it to boot yet! Problem here is the MM which is not really working on x64 builds yet. You can try the apps on a 64 bit Windows though.
And some very new thing… Beginning with r67740 ReactOS builds for ARM, too. Timo Kreuzer made some effort to get it build and succeeded. Some stuff is based on STUBS, but it does generate valid code. Same here… don’t expect it to boot yet. Same MM problems like x64 has and additionally the STUBS which need a real implementation, too. BUUUT it is a big milestone to get it build at all and in theory these apps should start on a jailbroken Windows RT just fine.
So, install or dig out your MSVC today and try it out. Most important feature of these builds does count for x86 too… the best Windows debugger ever works fine: WinDBG. Yes, this is the one MS uses for Windows, too AND you can use it in all it’s glory for ROS debugging ^^

Link of interest: HERE

P.S. I added some support for MSVC into RosBE. If you wanna try out: copy the new scripts from https://svn.reactos.org/svn/project-tools/trunk/RosBE/RosBE-Windows/Root to your RosBE setup and make a new shortcut containing these parameters: PATH\TO\RosBE.cmd vs MSVCVERSION MSVCARCH. Example for VS 2013 bulding a x86 build: PATH\TO\RosBE.cmd vs 12 x86.

Regarding the MSVC Versions:
MSVC++ 12.0 (Visual Studio 2013)
MSVC++ 11.0 (Visual Studio 2012)
MSVC++ 10.0 (Visual Studio 2010)
MSVC++ 9.0 (Visual Studio 2008)
MSVC++ 8.0 (Visual Studio 2005)
MSVC++ 7.1 (Visual Studio 2003)

This is it for today. Have fun with testing. ^^

Today the oldest of our cats died… She was the mother of many of our cats, the first we ever had and became almost 19 years… Last weeks showed the oncoming end, she started to stumble around and just peed everywhere she was walking aimlessly. Her skin had more and more tumors, but she ate like a world champion and we decided while she still eats, all still must be sort of fine. Today my mother found her lying around shivering. She took her to the vet and was the end. We will miss you…

Interesting speech by Jürgen Elsässer and completely ignored my our medias…
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=862796550433473

And here something for fun. Comedian Volker Pispers talking about russia 😀

Today the next of our cats died… He became way older than the others though, but after the apoplexy in January and a thought good recover off it he started to get weaker. Now he suffered from osteoarthritis too and today he started to loose control of his legs completely… We will miss you…

The last two are the most recent ones. Sammy was really concerned after the apoplexy and did not leave him alone at all anymore. She loved him anyway but that was new ^^

Heey,

long time no new post. This will be changed now.

After I successfully finished my training at my former company and now am a real System Administrator a new life began for me. They dumped me of course, but not without telling me that they know that I had a hard life with my former trainer and that they know their workers better than they think. ^^ Was a really cool talk at my last day. And now… No so called trainer calling you names and want to meet you outside to kick your sorry ass. No swearing because you did something “wrong” or more correct he thinks you did wrong, even if it works way better than his crap. No more calling you a traitor if you wanna have holidays. No more working till late night without being able to write down the extra hours. And after I changed my phone number, no calls from my former trainer, too ^^

Now I work at SOLOX, a IT Service company in Karlstadt. (Three years ago I sent a application there, too. But sadly I wasnt chosen at that time already.) It’s just simply great there. You can do your job at many different customers and learn new stuff every day. You work on your own and have some responsibility. I learned much more in the last two months there than I did in my whole training time. Luckily I taught the needed stuff to me by myself. My boss is great and if your work is alright, one of the coolest bosses I ever came in touch to. The others working there are a funny bunch of guys which you have to like the way they are. The days are really funny and still fulfilling, too. I hope I can stay there for a while (= looong time), because thats they way I imagined it to be working as System Administrator.

My former trainer now tried to get in touch with me by calling me at work. Luckily I told enough of my former experince with him that noone did let him through. This chapter is over for me. Forever! Next time my boss wants to take the call to get to know him ^^

Today the second cat from us died. Well he got weaker the last few days and just seemed to be really tired and today my parents decided that the vet should check him up. Well, it was not that good news at all… Red Cells in his blood were shockingly low and the kidneys seemed to be a real problem, too. Well, he still was eating at home, so they decided to take him back home again. But the stress and the injection for better coagulant were a bit too much…

Changelog:
– Amine Edition –

– New Patch tool fixing some bugs of the old one. (Thomas Faber)
– Updated the Setup to unicode. (Daniel Reimer)
– Stripped the files hto noted to.
– Updated binutils to 2.23.51.20120926. (Amine Khaldi)

HERE